Hyphenated keyword domains - better for anchor-text?

[tozzo]

so.... would esl-go.com have been a better domain name to purchase?

[awall19]

I think SEObook.com is a stronger brand name than
seo-book.com

it is going to depend from domain to domain and how good you are at branding and where you intend to get your traffic from (search engines or other sites, etc)

there is no clear cut answer in my opinion. I think it is possible to get your keywords in the domain name without using dashes, but some people prefer dashes because some people do link to sites using
http://www.seobook.com

usually most people link to me using "SEO Book" as the text though, but some do use seobook.com as the text.

[cltwebs]

I was able to achieve the top position in google within two updates of launching my site for the keywords "webmaster link exchange" for my site http://www.webmaster-link-exchange.com site. Think I would not have gotten that ranking if I had something like webmasterlinkexchange.com.

[James Trotta]

Originally Posted by tozzo

so.... would esl-go.com have been a better domain name to purchase?

Not better, but I should have bought both and had all linkers use esl-go while eslgo.com pointed to esl-go

By the time I realized my mistake, I had PR 6 and hundreds of links going to eslgo. It's a small handicap, but I guess I'm stuck with it.